Five times Johanna Mason takes a life
by obedientlittlevictor
Summary: And one time she doesn't. Canon divergent.


One.

Johanna Mason comes screaming into this world, purple and bruised and, quite frankly, disgusting, even for a newborn baby. She has too much dark hair and her eyes are wide set.

Her mother goes into labor toward the end of the summer, when logging demands are highest. The first chill of September is approaching and all of District 7 knows that's when the Capitol still thinks it's cozy and cute to have log-burning fires. That feeling goes away quickly, so the wood is replaced with more effective electricity heating, but those first few chillier days hold a tradition to burn wood in extravagant fireplaces only seen on forced Capitol programming.

Hildemara Mason delivers baby girl Johanna in the forest because Peacekeepers demand everyone to be in the woods, no matter how heavily pregnant and how terrible of a liability one is to the logging work. The women know Mara Mason isn't going to make it when the bleeding doesn't stop after Johanna starts shrieking with life. Her blood runs into the dark earth beneath her and baby Johanna is coddled in her arms for her last breaths.

Peacekeepers forbid anyone from running to tell Adolfus Mason that his wife is dying.

Johanna hears about this from her father on her birthday the year she turns 16. Her father had remarried almost immediately, as per District 7 tradition when there are three small children in the family and the man is strong and healthy enough to provide a good house to an honest woman, who in turn becomes a mother to the children. Sigfrieda Mason is the only woman that Johanna had known as her mother.

When she stands on the platform at her Hunger Games that next summer, Johanna thinks about how she's been a killer since birth.

* * *

Two.

The temporary housing in the winter logging camps are the worst, when four or five families are crammed into a house designed for one. The houses are unoccupied during the day and with no fires burning in the heaths, freezing temperatures pervade even the smallest of rooms. It always seems to take ages to warm the rooms back up to a livable degree, and even then, everyone still wears their winter clothing to bed most nights.

It's all that Johanna can think of as she digs a hole beneath a thick bush using the bit and head of the bloody axe she managed to wrestle from another tribute on the third day of her games. The girl is from an outer district too, but for the life of her, Johanna can't remember which.

To her credit, she can't feel her fingers either and all she wants to do is make a hole big enough to sleep in. The dirt tunnel would keep her warmer than being exposed to the howling wind between the tall trees in the Arena. By the time she has enough of a crawlspace to lodge her curled and shivering body in, the cannon has gone off twice. One of those is from the girl Johanna killed.

The girl had tried to sneak up on Johanna, unsuspecting and bent over a stream collecting water. It would have worked too, except that in her haste to kill Johanna, the girl had tripped over a tree root and pitched forward with the axe landing closer to Johanna than to her.

It feels almost natural to Johanna, like chopping lumber.

* * *

Three.

Johanna hates Finnick Odair. She would have hated him even if he hadn't told her to do what they say, murmurs into her ear accompanied by a playful tug from his teeth.

At almost 17, she's no blushing virgin, but when her first _patron_ makes to shove it up her ass as she's bent over his kitchen table, she panics, grabs the nearest item, a heavy silver candlestick, and bludgeons his head in. His face is a bloody pulp and she knows she just made the biggest mistake of her life.

Snow tells her that her entire family has been killed out in the woods, eaten by a pack of animals. "I believe your people call these creatures _wölfe_," he butchers the accent on the word, of course, but Johanna understands what he's saying. Johanna understands him enough to want to murder him right then and there.

When he threatens to withhold food from her entire District if she doesn't play nice with her future patrons, Johanna decides that she will be the one to take his life, just the way he took hers.

* * *

Four.

The Star Squad is dead. Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Gale Hawthorne, Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason, and several other District 13 members of the Star Squad are dead.

That's what the media is reporting, both in the Capitol and in the Districts, Johanna is almost certain. She, however, is very much alive, but very much on the brink of death as the team of now eight run through the underground Avox tunnels, desperate to outrun the lizard mutts.

They hiss Katniss' name and Johanna hates it. They are gaining speed, slithering unexpectedly quickly. Like all mutts, though, Johanna knows that they will take anybody, not just Katniss. The hissing her name is all for effect.

Peeta is first up the ladder, followed by Katniss boosted by Gale, then Gale himself, and two District 13 soldiers. Finnick is behind Johanna, last in their group, and he lets out a pained cry as the first lizard mutt nips at his heel. Johanna doesn't apologize as she swings her axe haphazardly at the closest District 13 soldier's legs, knocking her to the ground for the mutts.

Finnick's eyes widen as he realizes what she's doing but jumps over District 13 soldier's body anyway. There's no time to help as the lizard mutts are already devouring her body.

Johanna and Finnick are the last two up the ladder and out of the Avox tunnels.

* * *

Five.

The District 13 spies in the Capitol say that they can't find Snow. He's apparently nowhere to be found in all of Panem. Johanna has always wondered if there is something beyond the shores of District 4 that she had seen on her Victory Tour.

The closest they could find is Snow's granddaughter. Pomeline Snow is her name, surprisingly normal for a Capitol name. She is 12 years old. She is brought to the bombed out ruins of District 12 with a camera crew and the Star Squad, who had been hovercrafted back to District 13 when they were located after escaping the Avox tunnels.

Coin's idea is that Katniss would kill Pomeline Snow. Some sort of beautiful poetic justice that the Mockingjay would kill Snow's only family in the place where Snow had killed Katniss' family, no matter that Primrose Everdeen and her mother are safe in District 13. It is to be presumed that District 12 is still kin for the Mockingjay.

Katniss refuses. No one except Coin is surprised. Coin threatens to revoke protection of her family in District 13 if she doesn't do it. Katniss meets Johanna's eyes.

"I volunteer as tribute," Johanna declares. "Hope you don't want me to use that bow."

* * *

One.

The frontlines are closing in, Johanna realizes one dreary morning when the medical supplies had long since run out and the food supply was dwindling. There is an actual chance that the Districts would lose the war against the Capitol.

And that fucking sucks.

Johanna is still nursing a gash on her left shoulder from where a bullet ripped through the air and just barely missed its intended target: her heart. Haymitch was not so lucky. Still luckier than the ones who have died in the bombings and the shootings and the hangings, but not as lucky to have missed the bullet entirely.

As if his gut hadn't had enough trauma from the evisceration during his games, a bullet tore through his abdomen and exploded. They called the bullets "hollow-points," except the design had been changed to be more damaging.

Johanna visits him as often as she can, but with the Districts' limited army, all even remotely-healed hands are on deck for the fighting. Today is one of the slower days, when the fighting is in a different region than is feasibly possible for her unit to reach today, even with their assigned hovercraft.

"Kill me," Haymitch greets her when she walks in the medical tent and to where he is finally sitting up in bed. She tries not to wince at the overpowering stench of blood and what little crude alcohol the nurses have left.

Johanna looks at Haymitch incredulously, that after all they are fighting for, after everything they did and are still doing to make this world free, he would want to die.

"Not even in your wildest dreams, old man."


End file.
